Monthly Archives: December 2014

‘An Irish sky looks down and weeps
Upon the narrow Belfast streets,
At children’s blood in gutters spilled,
In dreams of glory unfulfilled
As part of freedom’s price to pay.
My youngest son came home today.’

Eric Bogle, from ‘My youngest son came home today.’

A little before 3am on 12th October, 1984, a bomb exploded at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, targeting the Conservative Party conference which was being held in the seaside resort. In September of that year, a man called Patrick Magee, a member of the Irish Republican Army (the IRA), stayed in the hotel for three days as ‘Roy Walsh’, and had planted the bomb with a 24 day delay on the timer. This was a similar tactic to one developed in Spain by the Basque terrorist group, ETA, who often infiltrated building firms leading to bombs being set to detonate months or even years later in the houses of leading politicians, sometimes using radio detonation. Magee’s bomb killed five people and seriously injured many more including Norman Tebbitt, a senior MP in the Conservative Party, who was President of the Board of Trade, and his wife, Margaret, who was left paralysed. However, the main targets were the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and members of her Cabinet, all of whom survived, mainly out of sheer luck. The attack shocked the country and the world, but why did it happen?

Patrick Magee was born in Belfast in 1951, and was in his late teens when the ‘troubles’ started in Northern Ireland. But his actions were not simply the result of what had happened during his lifetime for they had roots deep in the troubled history of Ireland and its relationship with Britain, or more significantly, England. It is a history which is long and complicated, open to a wide range of interpretations and often baffling. Despite the relative ‘peace’ since the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ of 1998, there are many people who remain trapped or haunted by the history of Ireland, especially that of the six counties of Ulster which form Northern Ireland. In Britain, especially in England, it is largely misunderstood or ignored, a matter of no importance or one that is too complex to consider. In the province itself, as in the rest of Ireland and parts of Scotland, it is a story which lives today, a story of injustice and treachery, of power and bullying, of theft and murder, a story which cannot be ignored or excused. Those who try to ignore the troubled history of the British in Ireland and Northern Ireland cannot begin to understand the problems, heal the wounds nor begin to address the future.

The statement issued by the IRA after the bombing of the Grand Hotel said: “Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once; you will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no war.” The use of the word ‘give’ cut to the heart of the issue in the eyes of the Republican movement: it was focused on power and control. As with the Civil Rights Movement, abuse of power was the issue, as decisions about the people, resources and institutions of Northern Ireland were taken in London, by people who saw the province as being under their control. It was, therefore, an issue rooted in Empire, focusing on freedom and the right to self-determination; those who benefited from the situation wanted it to continue while, quite naturally, those who resented living in a ‘colony’ were keen to see the restoration of a united Ireland.

Patrick Magee was, of course, not acting alone when he planted the bomb. He was part of a movement, a small but committed band of people who were willing to act with the greatest violence to achieve what they believed was the right, true or just situation, the reunification of Ireland, free from ‘English’ control. The IRA was the most well-known Republican group, although in the early 1970s it had split into two wings, the ‘Official IRA’ and the ‘Provisional IRA’, which was responsible for nearly all terrorist attacks carried out by the Republican movement after 1972. The Brighton Bombing of 1984 was carried out by the ‘Provos’, and was just one very high profile act in a terrible struggle which cost thousands of lives. It was another knot in the web of relationship between these two islands off north-west Europe, two islands where the people generally get on pretty well together. To people across the world, and many within the United Kingdom itself, the troubles hardly make sense; it can only make sense when you consider the power of the past, and, most of all, how you read, select and interpret that history.

Choosing a starting point for this history is difficult. It is not unreasonable to begin in 1800, when the island of Ireland officially lost its independence and was united with Great Britain, so creating ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’. Just a few years after the USA had declared its independence from Britain, and with Napoleon Bonaparte beginning to lead a rejuvenated French army across Europe, the government in London was deeply concerned about national security. In an age of empires, when slavery was still legal and the idea of rights was in its infancy, the status and welfare of Ireland and the Irish mattered little to London. Ireland’s location made it a potential back-door for attack, especially as it was a country which was predominantly Catholic. In these days before the Battle of Trafalgar meant that Britannia ‘ruled the waves’, ensuring that Ireland was under the control of the ‘United Kingdom’ made perfect sense in Westminster. So it was that the cross of St. Patrick was added to the ‘Union Flag’, creating what we know today as the red, white and blue of the ‘Union Jack’. Ireland was integrated into the British Empire, that vast area which many people would actually see as ‘England’s Empire’. The fact that today there is a country called the ‘Republic of Ireland’ and a province called ‘Northern Ireland’ is a particular legacy at the heart of the tensions.

The development of the ‘Union’ flag. The Scottish saltire was combined with the cross of St. George following the Act of Union in 1707, and in 1800, the cross of St. Patrick was added to create the ‘Union’ flag. This is still the flag of the country whose official name is ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, which most people don’t know. They also tend to get upset when told that England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are not recognised as countries in their own right. They only really exist for sport, which annoys FIFA and UEFA, the world and European football organisations, as it means the UK gets to enter four teams for each competition. (Author: Paula Guilherme; source: here)

The division of the thirty two counties of Ireland into two sections, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, is the most recent expression of an ancient struggle for power. Patrick Magee, the ‘Provos’ and the Brighton bomb wrote just one section of a dark chapter in the long and troubled relationship between England and Ireland. England has sought to dominate Ireland to a greater or lesser degree since the reign of Henry II in the 12th century and tension has existed ever since. There were many problems before the decades of suffering in the Twentieth Century but the lowest points came when Oliver Cromwell ruled Britain in the 1650s and with the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine, 1845-51. The power of these and many other events has to be appreciated if anyone wants to understand how we ended up in this place to begin with; as much as any country in the world, history is alive in Ireland.

The history taught and remembered by a nation reveals a great deal about it. The events it chooses to celebrate, the memorials it erects, the places it sanctifies and the people it honours, combine to both express and reinforce its sense of self, its identity. History is a powerful influence in justifying status and action in the modern world, as, say, the membership of the Security Council at the United Nations shows. Success, victory and power achieved in the past can play a huge part in creating a sense of status and expectation for the future. Those ‘victories’ have usually been achieved and maintained through violence in some form, bringing economic, political and social influence to certain countries, institutions and classes at the expense of others. The presumed right of the descendants of the victors to continue to act in the same or similar ways to those of the past can breed a not unexpected resentment over the years. The language of resistance used by Winston Churchill during World War II, for example, shows how much the British people feared being taken over by a foreign power; there can be no surprise that other countries should have had a similar feeling towards British control, even though they were not able to resist so effectively.

The uncomfortable truth for some people in a modern, liberal democracy, is that history is riddled with examples of ‘Might is right’. This cannot be avoided and much of the wealth and status of today’s dominant forces rests on the gains of war, empire and exploitation. In our pasts, people fought, explored, competed, dominated, controlled and exploited others; through such methods did England become Britain and then an empire. This tiny nation, what is basically the eighth largest island and the eightieth largest country in the world today, sandwiched between Guinea and Uganda, became the dominant force in the world for a century and remains a significant player on the world stage today. Despite the many skills and attributes of its people, the influence of force in English and British history cannot be ignored. Whether it was victory over Wales and Scotland, the Netherlands, France or India, war has been integral to the growth and maintenance of British power. This is not a criticism but an observation, of course; wars happen, but that should not mean they are simply dismissed or ignored. As Churchill suggested, the British people would do all they could resist the Nazi threat and it should be no surprise that other nations should feel the same way when Britain invaded.

The history of the English/British in Ireland does not read well for the majority of ordinary people in that country, who did not partake of the benefits that came to those who allied themselves with London. Over the centuries, most people saw England as a cruel and oppressive force led by people who were indifferent to plight of the Irish who were largely dismissed by as Catholic, backward and, almost deservedly, poor. Differences in language, industry, culture and especially religion were all issues which divided the two countries, leading England to be seen as the oppressor and Ireland as the threat. The power and wealth clearly lay in London rather than Dublin but that did not mean that there was compliance and acceptance across Ireland. Oliver Cromwell was a particular sign of division and hatred. As a ‘Puritan’, that most extreme brand of Protestantism, Cromwell ruled Britain for nearly a decade following the execution of King Charles I in 1649. His strong Protestant views meant that he saw the mainly Catholic Irish as a source of great danger and he willingly used his army on a people who had supported the recently executed King Charles. Cromwell’s attempts to bring the Irish to heel unleashed a wave of violence and the destruction of the town of Drogheda, in particular, has entered folk lore as the most potent symbol of England’s capacity for evil and calculated indifference towards the people of Ireland.

Two hundred years after Cromwell, disaster once again struck Ireland and English influence was once again blamed. The Irish ‘Potato Famine’ was the last famine to hit Western Europe and one of the most disastrous events in Irish history. The failure of the potato crop over several years devastated large swathes of the country, leading to the death of over one million and the emigration of millions to countries across the globe. This movement of people out of Ireland continued after the famine with emigration to many parts of Britain, Australia, and especially the USA, fostering massive resentment towards England which is still seen today in, for example, sport and the use of English accents to suggest sinister evil in Hollywood films. In 1840, the population of Ireland had been around 8 million; by 1900 it was below 4 million. This was at a time when populations everywhere else in Europe were increasing dramatically ,even , population of Ireland is still well below the figure for the early 19th century, the only European country for which this is true. English Protestant landowners, as well as the Westminster Government, were held responsible for the failure to deal with the blight which decimated the potato crop on which so many millions of peasants depended. It was the only crop which failed in those years yet food could not be found for the poor, some of whom resorted to eating leaves and even grass. The ‘Potato Famine’ touched every family in the country and it cemented the image of ‘perfidious Albion’, as the natural disaster of the ‘potato blight’ was made so much worse by the indifference and cruelty of Government officials who did too little too late to help the peasants who starved across the country. The frustration grew over the years amongst the survivors, especially the emigrants, festering into the deepest hostility in some areas, an anger expressed in many of the songs and stories of that period. The IRA would eventually grow from that anger and the desire for freedom, justice and, it must be said, revenge.

A reminder of the power of history: a mural on a house in Ballymurphy, Belfast, commemorating the ‘Great Famine’. (Author: unknown; source: here)

In the wake of the ‘Potato Famine’, resentment amongst Irish Republicans, who wanted independence from Britain, became increasingly aggressive from the 1860s. At the heart of this development was a group called ‘The Fenians’ who launched attacks against the British Government both in Ireland and in England. Much of their support came from Irish emigrants to the USA who had settled in the major cities of the north-east, such as New York and Boston. Some had made money since settling in the USA but they never forgot the reason why they had been forced to leave their homes, memories often fired by stories told by parents and grandparents. This fostered the development of various groups keen to fight back against Britain, trying to lead the struggle for freedom from English control. Ideology, anger and fund raising worked together, supporting groups like the Fenians and fostering a natural tendency to undermine the country which ruled a quarter of the globe. There was a deep sense of the injustice that fed the resentment against an elite and privileged group in England which seemed to have grown fat and rich on the ‘blood of the poor’. The last man to be publicly hanged in Britain was actually a Fenian, a man called Michael Barrett, who was found guilty for the deaths of 12 people in the ‘Clerkenwell Bombings’ in 1868. Such a public show of punishment would not stop the fund-raising or the volunteers, though, and Irish-American support for resistance to British rule would continue throughout the Twentieth Century.

The ‘Fenians’ themselves took their inspiration from Irish history as they looked back to the men and women who had rebelled against the English over the years. Two of these were Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) and Robert Emmett (1778-1803), both of whom had seen their efforts end in glorious failure. These two men became iconic figures for the Republican movement, their lives honoured in songs and music, and, indeed, ‘The Wolfe Tones’ is the name of a hugely popular band famous for playing rebel songs since 1963. However, despite the numerous attempts to resist British rule through force, some people tried to bring change through politics, most notably one inspirational and controversial figure,namely, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891). Immortalised in song as Avondale’s ‘proud eagle, Parnell who was one of the most important politicians of the late Victorian era. In an age when Ireland returned nearly one hundred MPs to Westminster, he focused his campaigning on the issue of the land and his cooperation with the great Liberal Prime Minister, WE Gladstone, saw the introduction of the First Home Rule Bill in the 1880s, a law which would have given some independence to Ireland. The Bill failed and Parnell fell from power thanks to the scandal that surrounded his affair with a married woman, Mrs. Kitty O’Shea. It is remarkable that a Cambridge educated Protestant landowner had united the country behind him, but the ‘Uncrowned King of Ireland’ failed to deliver real change and the political process was weakened in the process; Home Rule would never satisfy a hard core of people, for whom the full independence of the Irish state was demanded. Charles Stewart Parnell died in Hove at the age of just 45. It is never possible to know what might have been but, if he had lived for another twenty years or so, it is likely that there is much that might have been different and, maybe, better. As it was, Home Rule failed three times before the ‘Great War, each defeat exacerbating the anger and resentment of Irish Republicans.

The most significant of the Home Rule Bills was, in many ways, the third which was introduced by the Herbert Asquith’s government just before the war. Following on Gladstone’s footsteps, this was another attempt by the Liberals to grant some independence to the people of Ireland while keeping the country as a whole under the control of Westminster. Not all people were keen on such a prospect, though, with the Conservatives in Britain and the Unionists in Ireland, being fiercely against the Bill. The Third Home Rule Bill was a divisive piece of legislation, creating great hopes amongst its supporters but triggering massive anxiety amongst those who favoured the old order. The Conservatives, under the leadership of Andrew Bonar Law, gave their total support to the Unionists of Ireland, committing all Tory MPs to stopping the Bill becoming law. The Unionists feared a take-over by Republicans and, in 1913, they established militia groups or armed gangs, to protect the Protestant community; this was the UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force. The Unionist leader, Edward Carson was the first of many thousands who signed the ‘Ulster Covenant’, a commitment to defend the Union which kept Ulster, the predominantly Protestant province of Ireland, within the United Kingdom. In response to the founding of the UVF and the signing of the Covenant, the most ardent supporters of Home Rule (and of full independence for Ireland) set up their own militia group, ‘The Irish Volunteers’, a body which grew out of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which had worked for many decades alongside supporters in the USA to force the British out of the country. But then the Great War started and everything seemed to be put on hold.

Edward Carson (1854-1935): he was the hard-line leader of the Ulster Unionists who was also famous as the barrister who destroyed his ‘old friend’ and fellow student, Oscar Wilde. He joined the War Cabinet under David Lloyd-George in 1917 and was knighted and later became Baron Carson, all signs of his place within the British establishment. (Author: unknown; source: here)

The Great War put an end to immediate prospect of Home Rule for Ireland, and many thousands of Irishmen volunteered to fight in the British Army. This did not signify an acceptance of British rule, though, and there was a well-known saying amongst Irish Republicans that, ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’. The most famous example of this came during the war itself with the ‘Easter Rising’ of 1916. On Easter Monday, 24th April, a group of ‘Irish Volunteers’ under the leadership of Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Eamonn De Valera and others, launched an attack in Dublin. Although there had been months of planning, things were chaotic – and known by the authorities. The confusion was summed up by the capture of Sir Roger Casement, an Anglo-Irish diplomat, who was bringing weapons from Germany to support the rebellion. Despite the problems, things went ahead with the aim of taking over key public buildings in the capital in the hope that this would lead to an uprising of the ordinary people. The ‘Easter Rising’ turned out to be a disaster as the British Army suppressed the rebellion, destroyed the General Post Office, where the core of the rebel forces were fighting, and killed many of the rebels. More importantly, the Government put the surviving leaders on trial and found them all guilty of treason, imprisoning some but executing 13. These men became martyrs for the Republican cause, heroes of Ireland whose lives are still celebrated today. The most powerful moment came when James Connolly, one of the leaders who had been badly wounded in the fighting, had to be propped up in a chair in order to be killed by firing squad. The rebels might not have succeeded in life, but in dying at the hands of the British in such a way, they came to inspire many followers down the years, their deaths perceived as yet another sign of English cruelty and oppression.

A memorial to the leaders of the Easter Rising who were executed at Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, in 1916. Gerald Seymour’s quote from ‘Harry’s Game’, that, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” has rarely been more clearly seen. (Author: Unknown, source: here)

As the Great War entered what was to be its final year, tensions were growing in the Republican camp as victory for Britain and its allies became more likely. The dilemma over what to do next was a cause of much debate. The arguments were long and complex, and they saw the rise of ‘Sinn Féin’ as the main political party to represent the Republican cause under the leadership of a key figure in Irish history, Eamonn de Valera. (‘Sinn Fein’ is Gaelic for ‘We ourselves’ or ‘Ourselves alone’, a popular phrase amongst Republicans in the 19th century.) The party would retain close links with the IRA which was formed in 1919 as the Irish Volunteers were re-established. The following years saw great tension and conflict in Ireland as the British responded to a new ‘guerilla’ war fought by the IRA by sending in one of the most notorious forces ever: the Black and Tans. Wearing black jackets and khaki trousers, this force was a mixture of experienced soldiers from the war with numerous criminals who became the most hated symbol of English oppression. Their most notorious action was the killing of 14 people during a Gaelic football match at Croke Park, Dublin, on 21st November, 1920, which was done in retaliation for the killing of the same number of British by the IRA earlier in the day; it was a day which summarised the atrocities committed by each side.

During 1921, in an attempt to find peace of some kind, negotiations took place in London as the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, tried to broker a deal. Eamonn de Valera and Michael Collins, both key figures in the Republican movement, had important roles in this, with Collins effectively signing his own death warrant when he was sent to London for the talks and accepted a deal that angered many of the Republicans. The Agreement split the Republican movement in two and caused the Irish Civil War of 1921-22. Collins himself was just one of many victims of that war, killed by the IRA during an ambush in Cork. Eventually a deal was reached which saw the establishment of a semi-independent ‘Irish Free State’ in the south of Ireland (Eire) while six of the nine counties of Ulster became what we now know as ‘Northern Ireland’. Peace of a kind broke out but not a peace that would last. The Irish Fee State’s status changed in 1936 and again in 1949, when it became the Republic of Ireland, but peace in the North was always a fragile thing. In the late 1960s, after simmering for many years, ‘The Troubles’ began in earnest and the IRA launched its campaign of terror. Other Republican organisations, such as the INLA, the Irish National Liberation Army, were formed and played their part in the fighting against the British Army and Unionist paramilitary groups, such as the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UDA (Ulster Defence Association). The fighting would come to devastate the community and be a feature of the daily news for thirty years or more; nearly 3500 died in ‘the Troubles’, the vast majority of them being aged under 40.

British troops were sent to Northern Ireland in 196. This mural honours the women and children who challenged a military on the Falls Road, a heavily Catholic part of Belfast. (Author: unknown; source: here)

Tensions had never completely disappeared from Northern Ireland in the fifty years that separated the end of the Great war and the start of ‘the Troubles’. In the 1960s, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, many Catholics and Republicans began to campaign for equality in the Province. They opposed what they saw as a form of segregation in the Province based on religious belief, claiming that certain jobs, better housing and access to education, for example, favoured the protestant community. Special significance focused on the role of the courts, the legal system and the police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which were almost completely Protestant and, consequently, offered little by way of justice or protection to the Catholic community. In August, 1969, with tension and violence on the rise, the British Prime Minister, Labour’s Harold Wilson, made the decision to send troops onto the streets of Northern Ireland to keep the peace; it would be nearly 30 years before they could leave. The ‘Good Friday Agreement’ of 1998 may be an imperfect document in the eyes of many but it was a key moment in bringing peace to the province. Tensions remain, though, often surfacing in the ‘Marching Season’, that period of June and July when the Unionists march in memory of events like the Battle of the Boyne, when ‘King Billy’, William of Orange, defeated the last Catholic king of England, James II. The past comes painfully to life at such times, when the wearing of a bowler hat and a sash by members of the Protestant Lodge, the ‘Orangemen’, can trigger a wave of hatred and anger, which has its roots in an event from over 300 years ago.

As mentioned, it was the issue of Civil Rights which brought many Republicans onto the streets in protest during the 1960s. Inspired by events in the USA, where improved conditions for Black Americans had been achieved through protest, both peaceful and violent, many Catholics saw similarities with their own situation. One protest in particular triggered a massive reaction around the world, the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march in Derry or Londonderry on 30th January, 1972, when British troops shot 13 civilians, an action that many believe swelled the ranks of the IRA enormously. The anger and deep-seated sense of injustice felt in the wake of ‘Bloody Sunday’ was to tear Ulster apart over thirty years. It was those feelings which led Patrick Magee to try to blow up Margaret Thatcher and the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1984. The actions were taken by a group which refused to follow the democratic process or peaceful negotiation as they believed they would not achieve what they wanted in that way. They tried to force change behind the barrel of the gun as they believed there was no other way to do it. The roots of their actions have to be found deep in history, and the interpretation of history going back to 1972, 1916, 1845, 1803, 1798, 1688, 1651 and even 1169. Things which most British people have neither heard of nor care for, were at the heart of hundreds of murders, injuries and violence across many traumatic decades. The bombs were the horrid, frightening cry of Republican anger which meant that the IRA saw themselves not as terrorists or criminals but as self-defenders and protectors. Thus it was that in the 1970s the IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison started the ‘dirty protests’ where they refused to wear prison uniforms or use the toilets provided, protests which ultimately led to the famous ‘Hunger Strikes’ of 1981.

Those IRA hunger strikers included many leading prisoners of the movement, most famously, Bobby Sands. Sands was the first of a number of IRA prisoners to refuse to eat any food, starting his protest on 1st March, 1981, claiming the right to be treated as a ‘political prisoner’. He died after 66 days on hunger strike. He was 27 years old at the time and had actually been elected as an MP just before the ‘Hunger Strike’ began. In all, ten IRA prisoners would die on Hunger Strike, deaths which would harden attitudes on both sides. Francis Hughes, Patsy O’Hara, Thomas McElwee, Bobby Sands and the others who died would enter into legend with songs written, and memorials built, in their honour; in the rest of the UK, they would generally be seen as crazed terrorists, evil and destructive individuals who sort only to destroy ‘the country’. Extreme situations tend to breed extreme actions and, pushed to the margins, neither the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the main political parties, nor the IRA and its supporters, would negotiate or compromise at the time, and so the Troubles were nourished.

Patrick Magee was released from prison in 1999 as part of the prisoner release programme which was part of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’. He had served fourteen years for his crime, a term which many saw as inadequate punishment, his release being a travesty of justice. Magee had been born in a small nationalist ghetto of Belfast, growing up surrounded by the stories of his grandfather who had been in the IRA in the 1920s. The fear and frustration of his community matched the fear and anxiety of the Protestant majority, a situation his parents tried toe scape by moving to England, but Magee returned to play his part in the struggle, joining the IRA in the mid-1970s. His actions destroyed many lives at Brighton, his own dreadful page in a terrible history anger, injustice, fear and violence.

Patrick Magee emerged from prison with a first class degree from the Open University and a PhD based on the way the Troubles were presented in novels. After his release he said: ”Every generation of republicans has had to turn to violence. I would hope that now at last we can stand on our own two feet and fight our corner politically. The potential is now there at last.” His life, like the Troubles, was rooted in the ‘tragedy of history’, those powerful memories which have a long ‘half-life’, taking more than just a few hundred years to die away and become harmless.

One note for sports fans. Croke Park is the home of the GAA (the Gaelic Athletic Association) and it banned the playing of ‘British’ sports: rugby, cricket, football. So it was that when the Irish Football Association and the Rugby Union needed to play their internationals at a new venue due to the rebuilding of Lansdowne Road, it became a hugely important moment. The GAA faced opposition within its ranks but finally agreed and allowed Croke Park to be used. The first rugby match played against England in 2007 became a particularly powerful event, especially as the British National Anthem had never been played there. It passed off peacefully, marking a significant development in relations between the two nations and within Ireland itself. That’s the power of history, sport and reconciliation at work. Maybe it helped that the Irish won, 43-13.

Books: ‘Making sense of the troubles: A history of the Northern Ireland Conflict’ by David McKittrick and David McVea; ‘Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction’ by Marc Mulholland; ‘The Northern Ireland Troubles’ by Aaron Edwards; ‘A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s’ by Dervla Murphy; ‘Harry’s Game’ by Gerald Seymour; ‘Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and ‘C’ Company’ by David Lister;

Books/TV: ‘A History of Ireland’ by Robert Kee and ‘The Story of Ireland’ by Fergal Keane and Neil Hegarty

Songs: Music and song are powerful sources for the way history has been passed on in Ireland. There are many examples to choose from, especially from the Republican perspective, including: ’60 Greatest Irish Rebel Songs’, albums by the Wolfe Tones, ‘Spirit of Freedom’ by Christy Moore; ‘Ulster’s Orange Anthems’ offers a Unionist view and a clear contrast. These are very one-sided interpretations and should, therefore, be used with great care and thought. Other songs, such as, ‘Soldier’ by Harvey Andrews. ‘To find their Ulster peace’ by Vin Garbutt and ‘My youngest son came home today’ and ‘It’s only Tuesday’ by Eric Bogle, offer reflections from a different perspective, as does ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ by U2.

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